November 21 and 22, 1999

Five oil paintings stolen from Rome museum

ROME (Reuters) - Five oil paintings, including two by the 17th century Italian master Guercino, have been stolen from Rome's Capitoline museums, police said Friday.
They said the paintings, with a combined value of between 500 million and one billion lire ($250,000-$500,000), were taken while the gallery where they were usually housed, the Pinacoteca, was closed for restoration.
Curators discovered the theft while sorting through their collection in preparation for the museum's reopening on Nov. 25. They said the paintings had been stored in a room closed to the public and fitted with alarms.
The canvases were all on religious themes and not considered among the masterpieces of the Capitoline collection, housed in sumptuous buildings on the Capitol hill, the seat of Rome's government since the Republic and Empire.
The two Guercinos were ``The Holy Family'' and ``Saint John the Baptist'' from the early 17th century. The other paintings were ``The Adoration of the Magi'' and two versions of ``Holy Family and Saints'' by lesser known 16th and 17th century artists.
Police said they would be almost impossible to sell. The theft was discovered four days ago but curators searched the entire building before acknowledging that the paintings had gone.
Italy's Carabinieri military police have posted photographs and details of the oils on their Internet site as part of their investigation.
``These acts of delinquency are a great blow to our priceless cultural heritage,'' Rome mayor Francesco Rutelli said.
``I have high hopes for the investigation being conducted by the Carabinieri. If it finds that there has been any negligence in our museums, it will be punished with the utmost severity.''
Police say more than 4,000 valuable art works have been stolen in Italy, which has a wealth of artistic and cultural riches, in the last 30 years.
Three priceless Van Gogh and Cezanne paintings were snatched from a Rome gallery in May. All three were recovered a month later, two of them from under a bed in a city apartment. A Cezanne watercolor was taken from the National Gallery of Modern Art in 1992, the year that works by Spanish masters Diego Velasquez and El Greco disappeared from a museum in Modena, in northern Italy.

From: "Joseph Delci" joeyed@sprintmail.com
Subject:

light levels for paper

Hello all,
I just wanted to throw a question out there. In planning a long term exhibition (five to seven years) that could possibly include works on various papers (fine art and non) as well as paintings and 3D objects. What suggestions might some of you have as to increasing the ability of these prints to stay up for longer periods of time without receiving serious light damage, specifically, for a period of more than a year? What we currently do is enclose them in museum frames with protection behind UF3 plexi and closely monitor the light levels in the gallery. Are there any contemporary methods used to increase the time a print can stay on a wall?
Regards,
Joseph Delci
Chicago

From: Jack Watts firesafe@middlebury.net
Subject:

Re: query: development of fire codes for museums

In response to the John Jay College student and all others on the list, the definitive reference for fire safety in museums is NFPA 909, Standard for the Protection of Cultural Resources Including Museums, Libraries, Palaces of Worship, and Historic Properties, 1997 Edition. It is available from the National Fire Protection Association,
http://www.nfpa.org
-- Jack Watts
-------------------------------------------------------------
John M. Watts, Jr., Ph.D., Director
Fire Safety Institute, P.O. Box 674, Middlebury, VT 05753 USA
voice/fax: (802) 462-2663 email: firesafe@middlebury.net
URL: http://middlebury.net/firesafe/
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From: IntlArtCop@aol.com
Subject:

Millennium Update

I have received several more emails from subscribers who all will be spending New Years Eve at their museums. One will have additional guards on duty just in case. Several people sent me private email asking questions which I am always pleased to try to asnwer. As a result of some of the questions I received which I won't post here, I thought I'd pass on a few more thoughts.
I don't recommend that everyone pick up the phone at midnight to see if they have a dial tone as the phone company has indicated that this will add to their problems and could shut down the phone system even where no Y2K problem exists. But it is important that your control room know if the phones are working if you use a dialer that transmits your alarms to the central station via phone. So I suggest that you remain on alert until about 0015 hrs, then try to make a phone call out of your building. This will test your phone system--both the in house switchboard which may not be Y2K compliant and the phone company's ability to provide a dial tone after midnight.
I also suggest that you pre-arrange with your central station a test of their systems to make sure that they are in full operation. Call them in advance and explain that your facility has many vulnerable high value assets and that you will require a test of their equipment soon after midnight to assure that things are working properly at both ends. Call a week before January 1 and make an appointment to test your systems by phoning them about 0015 hrs January 1, reminding them that you will be conducting a test, then trip your panic button in your control room to see if they receive it. You can actually do this test while you are still on the line with them and ask them to tell you what alarm if any they receive as soon as it is received. This enables you to know for certain that they actually received the alarm and are not just saying that they did even if their systems have failed. You'll need to give them your password as you always do when you conduct a test. (You do have a password system, don't you)?
If you plan this out in advance, you can test the phone service and the central station all in one phone call.
Another tip that benefits the people in the west coast of the US more than Europeans and those on the east coast of the US is that you should be monitoring news sources to the east of you to see what problems, if any, they are having since they will reach midnight before you do. This may not work in smaller countries with only one time zone but in the US, for example, people in Chicago have a whole hour to react if the power grid or phone systems in the eastern US time zone fail and those in Los Angeles have three hours to react. I'm not certain what, if any, ramifications this has in the reverse. That is, things may go smoothly in the east at midnight but as people in the next time zone reach midnight and begin to overload the phone system by picking up their phone to see if they have a dial tone, this could possibly effect those in the eastern time zone in sort of a delayed reaction. We in the U.S. aren't really out of the woods until after 0300 hrs. when all of our continental regions reach midnight.
You may want to ascertain whether your city, county or other governmental entity will operate a Y2K command post. If so, get the number so you can call them. I'd call them in advance of Y2K and ask them whether they will be gathering information on specific public services and if not, remind them that you need this information and ask them to consider doing so. For example, when I was in Chicago, most of my guard force came to work by public transportation and it was important for me to know if, in storms or strikes, whether my people would be delayed. This is a similar situation and you should probably verify what, if any, impact Y2K could have on your day shift's ability to get to work on time. By calling the command post at 0300 hours to see if there are any transit delays as a result of the Y2K bug, you'll have a good idea whether your day shift will be in on time. Similarly, make it a requirement that your guards leave home a little early to come to work the next morning just in case there are problems with power outages, etc. While colder climates need not worry about civil unrest, if I lived in Miami or Los Angeles, I might also include in my planning the possibility of isolated civil disturbances if the power fails. The combination of power outages, excessive use of alcohol, and warm weather might be a problem. This is especially possible if you turn on the TV and see that there are disturbances in other areas of your country, state or city.
You should take a survey of your guards. How many day guards drive to work? How may take the bus or train? Do they cross a bridge or causway that might be effected? When we anticipated a transit strike in Chicago we used to give guards each a $10 bill in an envelope and tell them to open it and use the money if they had to take a taxi to work because of a bus strike. (Most didn't own a car so driving themselves was not an option). We told those who did have a car that we would find parking for them if they had to drive due to the strike and we arranged car pools where practical. It seems that such a contingency plan might be in order here. Remember that it will be very hard to get a taxi on New Year's Day in some cities.
I was also asked by one reader how soon we would know if Y2K was no longer a threat. My thought on this is that we won't know for a week or so for certain until the world financial markets have a chance to react. Certainly we won't know until the next regular work day (January 3 since January 2 is a Sunday). If, for example, there was a major banking failure in Europe that effected US banks, no one would know it until Monday.
Again, I want to say that I think everything will be OK but I, like you, get paid to think about these things. Several readers thought I was over reacting by worrying about this problem and writing about it. I've spent hundreds of sleepless nights worrying about the problems that could challenge my security program, from thieves to vandals to fires, to storms, etc. This is just another problem we will get past. But to think that this is an over reaction is unwise. If I were a museum director, I'd expect my security manager to send to my desk for review a comprehensive security plan that took as much of the above into consideration as possible. Don't be misled. In all of my years in Chicago, the curatorial and other staff treated me like I was some worrying grandmother. They often joked about my over reaction and called me Mr. Contingency because I always had a plan that backed up my back up plan. When I announced my resignation to go into consulting, I expected many of these colleagues to rejoice that they were rid of me but i found that they came to me and ask me to reconsider my decision to leave. When i asked the one curator who I regarded as a real thorne in my side why he of all people would ask me to stay after so many years of resisting what I tried to do, he told me that it was because he knew that I would worry about security and as a result he did not have to do so and if I left, he would not sleep as well at night. so even if you believe as I do that things will go smoothly, preparing a comprehensive Y2K plan is a good idea if for no other reason than to let people know that you are on top of things that they never even thought about.
Steve Keller, CPP
Again, I want to state that I don't feel that

From: Jack Watts firesafe@middlebury.net
Subject: [Fire Safe Heritage]:

International Conference

ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI
DEPT. OF CIVIL ENGINEERING- DIVISION OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
GR 540 06 THESSALONIKI P.O Box : 429 Tel. +30-31 995793,995777 Fax +30-31 995603; e-mail : kirpap@civil.auth.gr
Prof. KYRIAKOS K. PAPAIOANNOU Thessaloniki 20.11.99

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: FIRE PROTECTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE 25-26 MAY 2000-THESSALONIKI-ELLAS (GREECE)

CO-ORGANIZERS:
LAB. OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION-ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY
CIB-W14
CENTER OF THE CONSERVATION OF MOUNT ATHOS HERITAGE
The Programme Committee invites authors wishing to contribute papers to send a 400 word abstract of their contribution to the Conference Secretariat (address above) not later than 10 January 2000. Topics should fit the general Conference theme of fire protection of cultural heritage. Some solicited areas are:
* Fire protection of historic buildings
* Fire protection of historic sites
* National Fire Codes and Regulations for cultural heritage.
* Fire Safety Engineering in Historic Buildings.
* Fire Safety of Museums.
* Case studies
* Fire Management
* Archaic Materials (protection, fire tests etc.)
Approval of accepted abstracts and instructions will be sent to the authors not later than 30 January 2000. Papers will be due March 31, 2000. Only papers presented in the Conference will be published in the proceedings.